Roast puppy de cassis

Today Wendy DeCarlo came to our house for some puppy consultation. We have books and cable TV, which all let us know that we aren't horrible dog-parents or that Mitsu is a she-devil. But all of that provides only general information--even the Shiba Inu book--so we wanted a trainer to meet her and assess our particular situation. I don't want to be one of those parents who brag about their dogs and children, but I think she did pretty good today. It helps that she came to us crate-trained by the breeders, and that she naturally has an outgoing and confident personality. The more I think about it, the more it seems like Poo Monster Dud exhibited more skittish behavior--"I see you but I don't really feel like acknowledging you"--whereas Mitsu was much more willingly interactive with us when we hung out with the two pups in the breeder's living room.

This evening, Mordecai and I made roast chicken. It wasn't difficult! It helped that the Food Network posted Ina Garten's roast chicken episode on YouTube. This was our first time, so our chicken-carving skills are pretty non-existent, and the bed of vegetables was more like jail-cell-bed than Ritz-Carlton bed so most of them overcooked. I wish there was a way to practice cutting chicken without actually using meat. (...Is there?) Dessert came from a recipe in Maida Heatter's book, which was the super easy grapefruit and crème de cassis with a little bit of honey (above). I don't know what it is about it--it's like raspberry and grape combined?--but cassis is one of my all time favorite flavors ever. It makes me feel nostalgic, but I don't know for what. Like I grew up with it. Or maybe I was a little black currant in my past life.